With a host of intimate, browse-my-house visits, Sight Unseen is full of refreshingly candid and lucid artist profiles, all laid out in a format that showcases each subject’s words and works. The site also features sketchbooks, found objects, and compelling selections from glossies, books, and must-see exhibitions from around the world.

Explore Sight Unseen’s many departments, follow the site on Twitter, and learn how to submit your own art and story.

Andy Beach, America’s Favorites

Image from Raw Color’s This Is Basic exhibition

London’s Book Club by Shai Akram and Andrew Haythornthwaite

8 Things: Lisa Congdon

Mark Mahaney

Kostya Sasquatch

Kimm Whiskie

Mislabeled as a thriller, this allusive film is more “ha-ha” than hardboiled. Thomas Haden Church plays a lonely, dulled-by-routine custodian who rushes home when a note arrives: his one-time love is dying. After 25 years away, he’s more compliant than Pavlov’s hound upon reuniting with the loony, blonde beaut (Elisabeth Shue). But, as in many a noir, nothing can be taken at face value, with the dark and knowing narrative leading to a surprising end.

Explore the official movie site, become a fan on Facebook, read an interview with writer/director Jake Goldberger, and watch the trailer for the Coens’ Blood Simple, one of the film’s main inspirations.

In this full-bore cri de coeur for the missus, Bellocchio depicts Dalser as a feisty, resolute, and somewhat delusional woman, rather than some haloed madonna — a figure seared into memory by Giovanna Mezzogiorno’s impassioned performance. Bellocchio contextualizes the torn-out chapter of history with actual propaganda newsreels and declamatory texts that pulsate and surge from the screen.

The “polyexpressive” first half follows the superheated courtship between Dalser and a young, ambitious, but still idealistic Mussolini; her amour fou is pointedly made to parallel the countrywide hysteria for war and, soon enough, fascism. The quieter second half, meanwhile, focuses on her struggle to gain recognition and to reunite with her long lost son.

Read about the 2005 documentary that provides the backstory, learn more about Bellocchio’s storied career, watch Mussolini speak English in a rare 1929 Fox Movietone newsreel, and catch Vincere in theaters or on demand.

Exquisitely played by Kim Hye-ja (an actress who spent decades in Korean minds as a TV mother), the title character coddles her unpredictable idiot of a son as if the 27-year-old were 7. They eat and even sleep beside each other until, one hazy night, he’s charged with the brutal murder of a poor high-school floozy. With her maternal instinct in overdrive, Mother conducts a town-wide probe to exonerate her child, leading to Hitchcockian suspense and a Pandora’s Box of repressed secrets.

From the first to last scene — both featuring Mother dancing like a possessed marionette — Bong pulls the audience’s strings with a nimble, precise hand. His now-famous compositional polish keeps the story fluent even as it cuts between psychotic and slapstick asides, the melodrama and policier genres. And with the diehard aegis of this mother as the core focus, Bong and Kim have crafted an indelible character to top his ever-growing gallery of monsters.

Check out an interview with Bong, read the New York Times review, and see Mother’s grades at the New York Film Festival.

Based in the UK, the site provides a range that is nothing short of stupendous, with posts on everything from bamboo architecture and the most psychedelic river on Earth (located in Colombia’s Sierra de la Macarena) to the long history of gunpowder weaponry. Eye-catching photo galleries and videos supplement fascinating lists, such as the 35 greatest works of reverse graffiti and the world’s most terrifying spiral staircases.

Browse the site, submit a news story, sign up for the beta test of EG’s new online app, and follow Environmental Graffiti on Twitter.

“35 Greatest Works of Reverse Graffiti”

“The Elephant World’s Answer to Picasso”

“The Tallest Filing Cabinet on Earth”

“The Mysterious Shadows That Lie Behind Everyday Objects”

“The Most Terrifying Spiral Staircases on Earth”

“The Earliest Gunpowder Weapons in History”

“The Shortest Street on Earth”

Created in 1922 by Albert C. Barnes, an early 20th-century industrialist and voracious art collector whose bio reads like Horatio Alger, the Barnes Foundation made its Merion, Pennsylvania home a mecca for aesthetes, with eyefuls of brand-name paintings (i.e. 181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos) and only-here ephemera such as Native American ceramics. Barnes passed away in 1951, but his will declared that the works never be loaned, moved, or sold — that is until a few powerful figures in Philly saw the dollar signs in the impressionistic swirls.

Argott employs gabbing partisans, graphics, and archival footage to present a case that continues to open fault lines in the art world.

Learn more about the Barnes Foundation, read the New York Times profile, and check out a Filmmaker interview with Argott.

The Art of the Steal is an IFC film in limited release. It’s currently playing in New York, and will be available at theaters in Los Angeles beginning March 12. Check it out in Chicago at Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art and Block Cinema on March 10.

Throughout, Sendak is plain-spoken, wise, idiosyncratic, self-deprecating, a few shades dark, and very much irresistible. There are plenty of gem bits in this intimate, gilded-with-love ode, least of all the numerous montages of the work that made Sendak famous. For instance, his love for children’s literature, as it turns out, isn’t due to an out-and-out adoration for children, but a “peculiarity” in him — a real je ne sais pas.

After last night’s screening, Jonze called upon a good friend hidden in the audience to moderate a short discussion with Bangs and himself: Mike Myers. Here are a few of the more interesting exchanges:

Myers: Is your needle stuck in childhood?
Jonze: I guess creativity is a very child-like thing and I like being able to tap into that part of myself easily.

Myers: Maurice is an eccentric and, knowing you for awhile, I think you’re an eccentric as well. What do you think about eccentricity?
Jonze: I’m not sure if I am have a strong sense.
Myers: Are you so eccentric that you have no sense of other people’s eccentricity?

Myers: Maurice is an odd combination of emotion, intellect, and imagination.
Jonze: Maurice’s imagination is certainly inspiring and that’s what initially drew me to him. But the thing that I find most deeply inspiring is his ferocious honesty and his fearlessness to be honest. He has no ability for small talk or chitchat. He is who he is and he doesn’t have the energy to pretend that he’s someone else.

Jonze also took a moment to elaborate on the process of winning Sendak’s seal of approval:

The only thing that [Maurice objected to] was that Max didn’t go to his room, and the bedroom didn’t turn into the forest. That was something that Dave [Eggers] and I realized didn’t make sense in this movie we were writing. He didn’t hate it, but he did challenge me on it. He was always of the opinion that this is your movie and you got to make it the way you see it, but he kept trying to keep the idea alive. It was a hard thing to fight because a) I respect him so much and b) the image of it in the book is something I remember loving as a kid — the walls falling away, the posts turning into trees.

View the trailer below and pre-order a copy here.

The documentary on beat mining rounds up more issues than a town hall meeting, poring over everything from the best props for a sampled artist, to the basic merits and methods of the omnivorous art. The tone leans toward pro, with persuasive soundbites that liken sampling to archeology (the listener digs through the aural layers) and the democratic fact that “all these legendary musicians are in my band.” As Picasso once said: good artists borrow, great artists steal.

Visit the documentary’s website, brush up with a sampling glossary and timeline, read an interview with the filmmakers, and purchase the DVD.

In that what-if spirit, here’s a list of other American classics and the directors we think could make them their own. Leave your own scenarios in the comments.

The Wild Bunch: Michael Mann

Just think of all the actors who could line up in this Sam Peckinpah update. Let’s just use his last, oh, five movies to fill in the blanks: Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Colin Farrell, Johnny Depp, Christian Bale. Plus, Mann remains a superlative handler of gunfights and boxed-in men (Heat anyone?), and The Wild Bunch remains the best of that sort of fallen machismo.

It’s a Wonderful Life: Judd Apatow

Back in his day, Frank Capra was America’s leading director for feel-good comedies, his aw-shucks heroes toeing, but not quite falling into, the mawkish. Apatow introduced the raunch into the formula of the good-guy misfit and reigns as today’s comedy supremo. For all its cheer, It’s a Wonderful Life retains a particularly dark undercurrent — quitting this life when down-and-out — and Apatow has been mining the uneasy (mid-life virginity, unplanned pregnancy, even cancer) for laughs and pathos his entire career.

The Graduate: Wes Anderson

Mike Nichols’ classic might not have pioneered the use of an artist-scored pop soundtrack, but it’s one of those seminal cases. Many of Wes Anderson’s characters, from Max Fischer to the Tenenbaums, have ties to Dustin Hoffman’s college grad without a compass (whether moral or directional). The swimming pool reveries of The Graduate couldn’t be more primed for the Anderson touch.

3 Women: Paul Thomas Anderson

Altman is a saint for Paul Thomas Anderson, one of those in-the-time-of-need inspirations. But the ensemble roulettes for which Altman was rightly lauded, like Nashville and Short Cuts, are much too close to Anderson’s current M.O. 3 Women would be a welcome departure and a fascinating, small-scale foray into the world of femmes and the surreal after a mostly epic, male-focused oeuvre.

The Searchers: Quentin Tarantino

With his gift for quotable gab, QT refreshing the bonhomie of Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo would be an excellent choice (it’s one of his favorites after all). But better than that would be the famed cinephile’s take on John Ford’s masterpiece The Searchers. You can see its influence (as well as Leone’s) in the intro sequence for Inglourious Basterds, when Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) gets all shadowy in the doorway a la John Wayne. And it’ll murk up those cameos in such neo-Westerns as Sukiyaki Western Django and From Dusk to Dawn.

Started by the same-named artist-founded center in Seattle, this “performance on demand” service offers a slate of international creators at the vanguard of dance, theatre, and music. Already available are seven memorable productions from 2009, including Transition, a collaboration between director Tommy Smith and do-it-all Reggie Watts; The Shipment, Young Jean Lee’s trenchant play on race and culture; and Orgy of Tolerance, a consumerist pageant from name-brand Belgian Jan Fabre.

Start watching the full-length performances, sign up for updates, and visit the On the Boards blog for news and interviews.